


no ribbons, no starting guns

by filiabelialis



Category: Planeshift Fictional TV Series Campaign
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Canon Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 05:34:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13451595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/filiabelialis/pseuds/filiabelialis
Summary: The start of Dyr and Skjaldi's friendship--SPACE AU STYLE.





	no ribbons, no starting guns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Scribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/gifts), [feedingonwind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feedingonwind/gifts).



> Massive thanks to Aria for the beta.

Dyr dreams of fire, and wakes in a dark ship she doesn’t know.  
  
After a moment, she recognizes it as the medical bay of the Durizatrude, seen from a perspective she hasn’t experienced before: she’s lying on one of the two operating tables. There’s a sheet over her body from her breasts downward. She is naked beneath it, or nearly so; underneath her the metal of the table is leaching all the heat from her ass and back through the thin pad.  
  
She isn’t being neglected, or treated cruelly; dwarves simply have different comfort thresholds than humans. Childhood xenocultural lessons drift into her brain like a ship in a misty sky. Due to greater homeworld gravity, dwarves, especially those living in dwarven colonies, develop greater tissue density. Most therefor prefer to sleep on bare bunks without mattress or pillows, as laying on human-grade mattresses can feel a bit like being swallowed by a marshmallow. The Durizatrude is a dwarven station; the beds are accordingly hard.  
  
It means her right leg and arm are both dead asleep, though. Dyr tries to shift herself to let the blood flow back into them.  
  
Pain hits her then, a thudding in her temples and battered ache in all her muscles, in her skin--the only reason it’s bearable is because her nerves are cushioned by the cotton-stuffed feeling of strong opiates. Her ribs have bandages on them--she can tell without touching them that they’re likely fractured. Something she thinks is medical tape pulls at skin on her face and neck when she tries to move. She can’t move her right arm or leg at all. She wonders, with rising alarm, what kind of doctor would let a patient lie so long with no circulation in healing limbs, and reaches over to probe her cold flesh.

Her hands meet a glassy surface, smooth and cold. _A cast? What kind of--_ She cranes her throbbing head to look, and can’t--she tries to concentrate on what she’s seeing, and can’t understand it. She looks for a long time.  
  
“--told them you’d want someone here when you woke up, but they told me to wait outside.” There’s a young dwarf woman with box braids and a neatly trimmed beard next to Dyr’s bed, trying to catch her eyes. Relief floods her face when Dyr notices her. When Dyr continues to stare at her, as uncomprehending of her presence as of the thing attached to Dyr’s body, she continues, tone gentle.  
  
“I couldn’t get them to let me in until I showed them your vitals spiking, I’m sorry. I’m not a medic. They said I’d be in the way.”  
  
Dyr pulls the shards of her awareness, if not back together, then into some kind of orbit around each other. “What happened to my arm?” The words shake their way out of her.  
  
The young woman must hear the note of hysteria creeping into Dyr’s voice, because she asks, with careful enunciation, “Do you remember what happened before you ended up in the med bay?”  
  
Fire. It wasn’t a dream, it was an explosion, a panel of circuitry calm and dead for years overheating with its sudden resurrection--  
  
“I was with the excavation team trying to reclaim the asteroid mining station,” Dyr says, setting each word deliberately in order, rebuilding her reality from the ground up. “The mechtech repaired the internal generator. The wall--the electrical insulation in the wallscreen must have rotted out. It blew up.” _It took my arm._  
  
Because that’s what happened, that’s the reality her brain has been rejecting. It’s not a cast. It’s some kind of...prosthesis? It’s too slender to be a shell around an existing limb, though it’s right where the limb should be. Ergo, the limb doesn’t exist anymore.  
  
The young woman waits through the silent pause Dyr has left in the conversation, until Dyr’s eyes return to her face, mentally present again. “Most everyone else only had superficial injuries,” the young woman says, and Dyr feels a pang of guilt that she hadn’t asked, hadn’t even wondered. “Though the doc says Gunther might need surgical nanites to have a go at his eye if the cornea scars. But you were closest.”  
  
Dyr tries and fails to smile. “Clever me.”  
  
The woman’s lips purse a little. “Now is really not the time to be telling you you’re lucky to be alive, so I won’t.” She holds out her left hand. “I’m Eikenskjaldi. Just Skjaldi is fine, though.”  
  
Dyr takes Skjaldi’s hand with her remaining one, feeling wooden underneath the ache of battered bone. “Dyr.”  
  
***  
  
She is transferred to a longer-term recovery area, and a slightly more comfortable bed. That being done, Dyr really isn’t supposed to move. Given that she’s missing two limbs and still feels like she’s gone through atmospheric reentry without the benefit of a ship around her, she doesn’t really want to make the effort of doing so. For a while she doesn’t even have to, given how long it takes her bowels to get back to normal. Dyr has just enough medical training to know this is normal following a major procedure, and can enjoy the days before she has to be subjected to the indignity of being manhandled onto a toilet or over a bedpan by someone short enough to struggle with her long, useless limbs.  
  
All this training and she’ll never get to use it, she thinks, once, before getting so disgusted with her self pity that she sends a prayer of repentance to Pelor.  
  
Skjaldi, against all circumstantial odds, can make Dyr laugh enough to get her fucked up ribs hurting. It starts with pitch-perfect imitations of the verbal tics of the nurses, and moves on to recounting choice bits of conversation overheard in the mess hall, to truly epic anecdotes of decades lived on Durizatrude Station. Skjaldi’s whole life has been inside this hull, a fact that is mildly boggling to Dyr, who has been shuttled around various clerical training facilities before she even reached age of majority. Skjaldi’s whole family and community have spent most if not all their lives here, as well. They’re a close knit group, and the lore built between them is dense, self-referential, and very, very zany, at least the way Skjaldi tells it. It gives Dyr something to look forward to every afternoon, which is good, because she’s having a hard time finding something to look forward to in the longer term. For the first couple days she’d at least been able to pin her hopes on getting the damn urethral catheter out (a process Skjaldi was blessedly, politely absent for), but that being done, she lacks a second emotional toehold.  
  
She simply has no idea of what her expectations should be. She still can’t move the arm, or her right leg, replaced from the upper thigh downward with a mechanical version of the missing one. Increased ability will come with time, increased strength, and physical therapy, the nurses assure her, something she certainly won’t be given until she heals further. The story checks out--she looks into prostheses the moment she can figure out a left-hand hold on a tablet with net access. Apparently most designs are powered by electrochemical energy provided by the regular cellular processes of the biological body. Her body is still fairly weak.  
  
Even so, she can’t yet make herself believe that they will move; they seem a massive weight each time the nurses struggle to transfer her lanky body into a wheelchair, the dwarven craftsmanship too heavy for her relatively light human bones.  
  
The prosthetics weigh on her less than other things. She can’t help but look her doubts in the face; she really took to principles like Self-Awareness, Balance, Attentiveness, all that Acolyting 101 stuff. Still, a few days of painkiller-induced hazy brain and Skjaldi’s jokes are a nice thing to sink into. At least until she gets used to the idea that half her body may be solely decorative, now.  
  
***  
  
“And have your recent experiences had any impact on your faith?”  
  
Dyr stares. “I, uh.” She swallows, collects herself. “I thought you were the physical therapist. Is there...um, why…” Dyr can’t quite figure out how to ask this, although the dwarf in front of her is looking so _helpfully attentive_. Skjaldi is a chair away, giving this person a disbelieving stink-eye, which helps Dyr decide to go for the forward, possibly-rude option. “Why did the religious counselor show up before the PT?”  
  
The dwarf counselor--whose name has gone clear out of Dyr’s head with the subsequent questioning--makes a valiant attempt to look confident as they answer, “Well, as you were a cleric who had undergone considerable physical trauma, you would need to see Corporeal/Genomic therapists, psychotherapists, and faith counselors in no particular order, and I, your faith counselor, was the first available.”  
  
Dyr is still a little taken aback, but having it put in such clinical and legal terms helps her figure out the best way to couch her question. “May I refuse particular types of care?”  
  
The faith counselor shifts in their seat, and Dyr thinks their long beard is the only reason she can’t see them visibly swallow. “You may of course refuse any service offered in relation to your personal healing, as per--”  
  
“I would like to refuse the services of a faith counselor at this time,” Dyr says, just shy of apologetic. She’s making them nervous, but she needs to draw this line.  
  
“Of course,” says the counselor, twitching their way out of their seat and out of the room.

“What was that nonsense,” Skjaldi mutters to herself right after they leave. “He literally went straight from establishing your name and injuries to ‘so had any crises of faith lately?”  
  
“They--he seemed pretty abrupt, yeah. I mean, he reads off ‘right side AK ablation’-whatever and I’m thinking he’s a nurse or Cor/Ge or something--”  
  
“Sorry for the weirdness. People here aren’t used to talking to people they haven’t known forever.”  
  
“That does explain some things.”  
  
Skjaldi flashes her a grin. The ensuing pause is a bit too pregnant to let Skjaldi get away with casual, but she’s clearly doing her best when she asks, “I can see you don’t wanna talk about it right now, but for what it’s worth, if you ever do, I’m here for you. Or, I could grab one of our clerics, if you wanted. Father Sudhri is a really good dude.”  
  
Dyr doesn’t know what to say for a second. “Thank you,” she settles on for a start. “Seriously. Trust a cleric to say this, but acting as a spiritual confidante is a holy service. It means a lot that you’d offer.”  
  
Skjaldi’s smiling, touched. Dyr can feel her own face mirroring it. She decides to keep talking.  
  
“And honestly, I don’t think there’s much to talk about, in terms of how my faith has changed. I don’t feel any sense of abandonment, or, or anger, not at Pelor.” _Just at me_ , she doesn’t say. “You can’t reach full priesthood without knowing that bad things happen to the faithful, and the good. Bad things happen to everyone. Why should I be different?”  
  
Skjaldi shrugs. “I honestly never thought of it that way. I wonder if maybe Moradin has a more explicitly contractual relationship--you know, ‘my chosen will have my protection,’ all that--with his faithful? I’m no cleric, so.”  
  
“I think that if Pelor had the the ability to heal and protect us all directly, he would. But the way they taught it to us, it’s like solar power,” Dyr meets Skjaldi’s wry grin with one of her own, acknowledging the cheesiness of the metaphor. “Suns have all this energy, shining out, but you need some kind of energy conversion system, like solar panels or chlorophyll, to make use of it. The spiritual aspects of The Sun are similar. The power, the light, the love, it’s all there; but the clerics are the conduits to take that power and turn it into magic and healing. It’s our good works that have to do it. It’s up to us to make the worlds grow.” Dyr drops her gaze from Skjaldi’s. She’s getting a little too into the speech, she suddenly realizes.  
  
“You really, really believe in Him,” says Skjaldi, but she says it with no trace of mockery or condescension. Only mild wonder.  
  
“Yeah. Sorry for the sermon.”  
  
“It’s cool. So yeah, no crisis of faith here, I guess.” She seems to catch something in Dyr’s face that makes her tilt her head in a question, but Dyr doesn’t take the opening. The rest of it is something she doesn’t have words for, yet.  
  
“If that PT doesn’t make an appearance here someday soon, though, I’m going to start feeling forsaken by the gods,” she grumbles instead, and Skjaldi laughs.  
  
***  
  
The physical therapist--technically a Corporeal/Genomic therapist with a specialization in bipedal rehabilitation-- makes an appearance. Her name is Andvari, and she never smiles, though she is attentive, considerate, and projects an air of competence.  
  
That’s why Dyr is surprised when Andvari says that she isn’t confident in her ability to treat Dyr.  
  
“Essentially, I’ve only ever worked with dwarves, and the needs and limits of that species,” Andvari explains. ”You’re human, and as such the treatment programs I’m used to prescribing won’t fit you, especially given the dwarven-standard artificial gravity of this station. This doesn’t mean I won’t treat you,” she adds, at Dyr’s apparently very visible dismay. “It just means that I will have to do so with the assistance of a Cor/Ge AI program with multiple species protocols. The AI is essentially a medical encyclopedia and a program into which I can enter as much data as I can about your physical statistics and medical records, and which will help me generate a treatment plan. The Cor/Ge AI will help me know your needs and limits, and I will be helping you with the exercises and monitoring your progress, feeding the AI more data about you, so we can most effectively refine the plan as we go. Does that sound like something you’re comfortable with?”  
  
Dyr’s more than comfortable, not least thanks to Andvari’s willingness to admit to her own shortcomings in the interest of better helping her patient, and tells her so. Dyr swears she sees the corner of Andvari’s mouth twitch up.  
  
The initial calibration of the AI to Dyr’s physical specs takes some time, but the program itself is kind of delightful. The interface is a cheerful holographic canine, which asks her questions about her medical history in a disembodied mechanical voice. It trots around her room on stumpy legs, much to Skjaldi’s delight.  
  
“The interface is designed for comfort,” Andvari explains. “When it was established that you were human, it selected a skin that most humans have reacted favorably to in previous versions. It’s adjustable, though.”  
  
“This one is fine,” Dyr says. Skjaldi squeals a little as the Cor/Ge AI hops weightlessly up onto the end of Dyr’s bed.  
  
***  
  
Dyr holds her artificial hand in her lap, working the wrist through one of the exercises the Cor/Ge prescribed for her. The dog is cute, but it means business--once her ability and willingness to challenge herself were established, the AI has kept her in hard mode. She’s distracted by something else, though. She frowns downward.  
  
“What’s wrong?” asks Skjaldi. She nods at the artificial hand. “Has it attained sentience? Does it flip you the bird when I’m not looking?”  
  
“If they were going to make me a living sculpture they could at least have given me a whole right tit,” Dyr mutters to her abdomen. Skaldi visibly swallows a laugh.  
  
“You got something to say?” Dyr grins at her.  
  
“I just think, you know, while you’re out here spreading beneficial change to the universe, you might as well become the poster child for out-and-proud breast asymmetry. I mean,” Skjaldi says, like she’s trying an untried joke, “dwarves, humans, elves, halflings, orcs--we all have the Bigger Left Tit phenomenon, and for all our differences, not a single one of our species wants to admit it’s aesthetically normal. Some of us can withstand five times the barometric pressure of the others and yet we all collectively pretend that we have two boobs of uniform size.”  
  
“That’s a cosmic injustice, right there, it’s true.”  
  
“I guess what I’m saying is that I have a couple formerly tweenage bullies for you to smite.”  
  
Dyr laughs, but it sounds forced even to her.  
  
“Damn,” says Skjaldi, and fumbles awkwardly for the next words. “Sorry, I fell so flat on that one I think I might have offended you. Is the smiting thing a cleric stereotype, or--”  
  
“No, you didn’t say anything wrong, you’re fine,” says Dyr. She really doesn’t want to say this next bit out loud. But come on. Keeping silent about it won’t make it less true, and it is past time for her to face the music on this one. “I just don’t think I’m going to be doing any more smiting. Or, really, any at all, since this was my first mission as a full cleric.”  
  
Skjaldi has gone sober. “Are they going to defrock you for an accident you weren’t even responsible for? Because that would be so fucked up.”  
  
“No, although it won’t score me any points, that’s for sure.” This was, after all, her maiden mission after her confirmation as a woman of the weft. She’d had standard years of practice trailing other clerics on similar missions as an acolyte, and had thankfully belonged to a sub-order that encouraged her to think critically and vocally in the presence of her superiors, so she was far from indecisive and adrift; but this was her first jaunt where she, and she alone, made decisions representative of her order. It would say something, for her and Thoben, who had vouched for her, that she managed to blow herself up the first time she was let out without supervision.  
  
“No, it’s just that--sorry, gimme a sec--” Her voice is breaking, but she’s going to get through this. “--I don’t think I can cast anymore, with mechanical components. It hasn’t worked well, historically,” she interrupts as Skjaldi opens her mouth. “For sufficiently sophisticated prosthetics, like the standard bio-powered, fine motor capable ones like I’ve got, the magic messes with their circuitry. It’s like--gods, I’m not an artificer or mech tech at all, I feel like I can’t really explain it.”  
  
“Artificers use magic with their droids and mech tech, though, I’ve seen--”  
  
“Yeah, but it’s a different kind of magic than clerical magic, and a different kind even than other kinds of biologically-channeled magic like what druids use.” She verbally flails a bit more before collecting her thoughts. “Let me put it this way: when I was training to become a member of clergy I was training my mind to enact changes in the universe on a quantum level. It’s a unified effort of will and body. Circuits are not sufficiently adapted to the processes--the spells--I learned to do that.”  
  
“You couldn’t figure out your own processes?” Skjaldi looks embarrassed right after she says it. “You just had your first mission. No way do you have the experience to invent spells.”  
  
“And now, I have no way to get that experience.”  
  
“Moradin,” mutters Skjaldi. “I’m really sorry.” She gives Dyr a considering look. “You knew that when you woke up and you didn’t say anything all this time.”  
  
“I didn’t really want to. It kind of makes it more real, talking about it.”  
  
Skjaldi sits down next to her. “So...do you have to leave the order?”  
  
Dyr heaves a sigh. “They won’t force me to, no. They might even find another position for me, if I want it--I could always become a paladin. Lots of clerics who get prostheses choose that option. Less spellwork, more shock troop work.”  
  
“Because you definitely need more situations to charge into and possibly get blown up.”  
  
“Better than being a missionary--I hate proselytizing. I guess I could settle down and be a pastor for an established colony, but I wanted to travel, so bad. I wanted to go where I was needed.”  
  
“Gods, I hear you on that,” says Skjaldi. “Being stuck in one place is the worst. What?” she says, because Dyr is staring at her in surprise. “Yeah, I spent my whole life in this station, and I am _sick of it_. I am tired of hearing the same twenty stories over and over, and eating the same food, and seeing the same fucking _faces_ , I would give anything to just pick up and leave--” Skjaldi halts, flustered. “Sorry! Sorry. I just made this about me.”  
  
“No!” Dyr flaps her hands a little. “No, please, let’s talk about you, I’m really, really sick of dwelling on my problems. Where would you want to go?”  
  
“Anywhere.” When Skjaldi says it, her eyes go soft. Dyr recognizes the look: a rapturous gaze on beauty that can’t be seen with the eyes. The calling.  
  
“Why don’t you leave?” Dyr asks, gentle.  
  
Skjaldi’s eyes snap back to the present, like reality has slapped her in the face. “And do what?” she asks, so snidely that Dyr knows Skjaldi is calling up a tone she’s heard a million times before. “I’m a miserable craftsman, and only a semi-decent fighter--not anywhere in the league of fighters for hire or anything like that. I’m no mechanic, no scientist. I can play music and tell stories. I can’t travel on that.”  
  
“Some people do,” Dyr says, but guiltily. Skjaldi’s words are so final it feels like Dyr might just be torturing her to draw the conversation out.  
  
“Not alone. And we’re a mining colony, not a spaceport, it’s not like we have a steady stream of guests that I could audition to or pay for passage. My family won’t fund my travel--they think it’s frivolous. I’m stuck.”  
  
Dyr thinks about it. She can think of an obvious solution, but she’s trying to figure out if it is actually workable. She can’t even say “it can’t hurt to propose it”--it clearly can, to rejuvenate Skjaldi’s hope. Still, the more she thinks about it, the more viable it seems.  
  
“You know,” she says, “I’m not going to be here forever. I have to go back to my order, or go back home.”  
“I know,” Skjaldi says, clipped and sad.  
  
“I mean they’re going to have to send someone to pick me up,” says Dyr, “and I don’t think they’d refuse another passenger, at least as far as one of the bigger transit hubs.”  
  
Skjaldi is looking a bit surprised, but not distraught yet, so Dyr continues. “Even if they asked for fare, I bet we could work something out where you could work for passage, if you needed to.”  
  
There is a long, long moment of silence, where Skjaldi stares out the viewport. It makes Dyr think about hope as a distant star, a pinprick of light born into a dark horizon.  
  
“Do you really think they’d let me?” Skjaldi finally asks, tentatively.  
  
“You’re an adult, so it’s not like there’s a legal reason not to take you if you want to go, right? I’ll try to contact my order and put in a request that you accompany me, if you want to. And if they hesitate, I won’t hesitate to kick up a fuss.”  
  
“Oh gods,” says Skjaldi. “Gods, you don’t have to do this for me.”  
  
“I kind of do, though,” says Dyr, feeling a pull at her heart as she says it. “Skjaldi, you came and looked out for me from day one. Out of sheer kindness, as far as I can tell.”  
  
Skjaldi smiles ruefully. “In fairness, you were somebody new, so you were automatically the most interesting person here. And I was helping my mentor out a little.”  
  
She continues after Dyr gives her a puzzled look, taking on a cautious tone. “Ok, remember Harkk? The mechtech on the away team? The one who revived the generator on the asteroid mining outpost?”  
  
Dyr’s gut twists, a complicated tangle of emotions. “Yeah.”  
  
“He felt so guilty for what happened to you. He was...well, he wasn’t about to admit it, but he was kind of on the edge of hysterics until we heard that you had stabilized. He’s also my mentor’s husband.” Skjaldi pauses to let this sink in. “So while Master Bafurr--that’s my mentor--has been doing his best to take care of Harkk, I thought I should look in on you. They still ask after you, by the way.”  
  
“Oh,” says Dyr. It’s a lot to digest. She thinks about it for maybe a minute. Then, she says, “But you spent so much time with me. You helped me with all my exercises. And I know it wasn’t just because you like the Cor/Ge AI.”  
  
“Well, yeah,” says Skjaldi. “I got to know you. And I,” she looks at her hands, folded in her lap, embarrassed, “I consider you a friend, now.”  
  
Dyr’s throat is tight. Her feelings are no longer tangled, though, and her course of action seems perfectly clear.  
  
“I think of you as a friend, too,” she says. “And that means I don’t want to leave you here and never see you again, and it means I want to help you get what you want. Please come with me, when I go.”  
  
Skjaldi swallows. “Gods.” She takes a steadying breath, and lets it out, before speaking again. “I don’t want to seem ungrateful, because I am so, so--that would be so amazing. But...can I think about it?” She meets Dyr’s eyes. “It just feels so big.”  
  
“Yes! Yes, please take all the time you need,” says Dyr. “I’ve had a couple messages from Father Thoben, and I think we have another standard week or two before they’ll be able get someone out here, anyway.”  
  
“Thanks,” says Skjaldi, sincerely. “Because it looks like I have something to discuss with Master Bafurr and my family.”  
  
***  
  
The talk with Master Bafurr goes well, apparently; the way Skjaldi explains it, he took her on as an artificing apprentice to placate her parents, and to broaden her skills into a craft that could support her more bardic hobbies. But, in spite of his best efforts, and the best efforts Skjaldi could summon up in the face of deep unhappiness with prospects so far from her dreams, they were jointly coming to an unavoidable conclusion: Skjaldi was going nowhere in the realm of artificing.  
  
“Someday, I will tell you the story of the first time I tried to operate a soldering iron,” says Skjaldi, “I just have to figure out a way to make it funny instead of mortifying.”  
  
Needless to say, Master Bafurr is apparently thrilled on Skjaldi’s behalf that she will have an opportunity to pursue a career she loves and excels at.  
  
Skjaldi has not yet spoken to her family, mostly because she has no idea how to proceed.  
  
“They’re not going to forbid me to go, no,” she says, hauling herself up to the catwalk by her hands, turning to look down at Dyr through the grate. “I’m just trying to figure out the likelihood of them disowning me. Can you get up here from there?”  
  
“I think so.” Dyr still needs to concentrate on certain hand movements. This one isn’t too complicated, though. She bends the elbow as much as she can to her side, then extends the arm up--she’s much taller than Skjaldi, and does not require the initial leap--makes a solid fist around the rail, mirroring the movements of her other hand; then lifts herself by main strength. She’s not quite at full strength, yet, but she thinks, as she scrambles up onto the catwalk after Skjaldi, she’s not doing bad. “There many more of these to climb, though?” She’s a little out of breath.  
  
“Nah,” Skjaldi grins, “just tunnels and stairs from here on, I think.”  
  
They’ve been spending increasing time out of the recovery ward, walking through less crowded corridors so that Dyr can move at her own pace, or rest when she needs to. At least, that’s how it started; Skjaldi has a comprehensive knowledge of the more interesting corners, crawlspaces, and hidey-holes around the station, and Dyr likes to challenge her mobility. It has been a far from boring series of excursions.  
  
This latest is something of a desperate bid for freedom from routine. Dyr was ready to go on a hunger strike if she had to eat more of the colorless, phlegmy slop the medical staff all refer to euphemistically as NutriPorrige and Skjaldi refers more truthfully and descriptively to as “goulash, emphasis on the goo.” Skjaldi, in addition to her honest nomenclature for disgusting semi-foods, also has a more reasonable solution to Dyr’s dietary woes; she suggests they go elsewhere in the station for food. Dyr, unaware that there _were_ other types of food on the station, decides to keep her possibly culturally insensitive mistake to herself, and asks what Skjaldi’s favorite food is, and where they might find some. The answers, respectively, are “kugel,” and “at this greasy little outlet directly at the junction between the fourth quadrant main hangar and the cryo-storage wing,” which, when not approached via the main causeway, involves traversing a near vertical pile of intersecting catwalks and tangled stairways. Dyr is really looking forward to this food.  
  
The outlet can’t quite be called a restaurant, given that the tables are not arranged so much as crammed into any available space, and the food is not so much a standard menu as whatever supplies are near going off despite cryostorage, battered, deep fried, and glazed with whatever sauce is going off despite cryostorage, and then washed down with powerful dwarven ale. It’s crowded with dwarf shuttle pilots and mechanics. It’s loud, and mostly everyone is speaking the Dwarvish patois of the Durizatrude colony. The food, though deeply weird, is excellent.  
  
Dyr is facing the door, so he catches her eye first, and he meets her gaze with a friendly, if slightly apprehensive, smile.  
  
“Hello, Skjaldi,” says the dwarf, approaching their table nodding his head at the dwarf in question. Then he stretches out a hand. “Hello. You would be Dyr. I’m Bafurr.”  
  
She recalls the name. “As in, Skjaldi’s mentor, Master Bafurr?” The hand he’s holding out is his right one. Dyr concentrates, raising the elbow, adjusting the shoulder, opening the hand, fitting each finger around the meat of his palm, matching the web of her thumb to his, gripping light enough that she won’t hurt him.  
  
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she says, finally, shaking his hand very gently up and down.  
  
He smiles again, satisfied, and Dyr realizes that he was assessing her dexterity on purpose.  
  
Before she can figure out how to feel about that, Bafurr says, “I’m very glad to see you doing so well. My husband will be relieved. He knows he made a choice that changed your life.”  
  
This is all very intense with very little warning. Dyr tries to roll with it. “He...I...He should try to rest easy,” she finds herself blurting out. It’s strange; when Skjaldi told her that Harkk felt guilty, there was a nasty little thought that echoed, over and over, in the underbelly of her mind. _Good._ It’s true, he made that choice, what should perhaps be called _that mistake_ ; he precipitated the accident that means now she can’t be a cleric anymore. She should feel angry, and she does.  
  
But looking Harkk’s kind and steady husband in the face, she can’t quite bring herself to feel _vindictive_.  
  
“I don’t know if it was negligence or an unforeseeable accident,” she says, awkwardly. It’s hard to talk about the possibility of “negligence” on the part of someone’s _spouse_ , to their _face_ , but Bafurr is nodding with understanding, so she presses on. “But I can tell he would do a lot to take it back, if he could. And if it was as much of a surprise to him as it was to me,” she says, gaining momentum with the ghost of Bafurr’s smile, “I can’t really blame him. I’m not perfect either.”  
  
Bafurr looks at her a long moment, still with that tiny smile hiding in his beard. “Not perfect, but by the gods, you have a kind heart. Thank you.”  
  
Dyr has legitimately no idea how to respond to this. She shrugs. “Hey, I lived.”  
  
“‘When the worst relents we learn to live on less,’” says Bafurr. “A human bard said that, though her name has escaped me. May I sit? Thank you.” He settles, and picks up where he left off. “Though I’m hoping it will not have to be very much less, for you. I understand you have concerns about your career as a cleric.”  
  
Dyr gives Skjaldi, who is looking a little guilty, a sidelong glance. Dyr begins to wonder if Bafurr showing up here was as serendipitous as it first appeared.  
  
“As it happens,” Bafurr says, “increasing compatibility between artificery and the divine and arcane streams of magic has been the subject of my research for some time. I’ll keep the explanations short and simply say that I have successfully reproduced several simple prototypes, but that all the principles for attempting divine-compatible bio-cybernetics are there. I have yet to run some simulations on my latest model, but provided those go smoothly, I would love you to be my first test subject, if you would like to be.”  
  
He sits back, smiling, and reaches for a fritter from Skjaldi’s plate. He’s willing to wait as long as he needs for Dyr to lower her hand from her open mouth, and pull herself together.  
  
This feels like a sign, and maybe that’s why her ears are ringing like they do in the silence after a hymn’s final note. Maybe that’s an arrogant thought--that a god could attend her personally, when what it really is is an act of incredible personal kindness. _The flora, the fauna, the peoples of the earth are as much a miracle as the Sun that warms them,_ she reminds herself, and asks Bafurr, “How soon?”  
  
***  
  
Skjaldi, Bafurr and Dyr sit in chairs because Dyr’s bed has been turned into a makeshift drafting table for Bafurr’s blueprints. He’s answering her layman’s questions about the functions and potential difficulties of her hypothetical new prostheses with infinite patience. He covered the risks of the procedure first: pain, should she choose to be awake for the procedure; the sensory and functional unpredictability of a new technology on a human body; the possibility, should the new prostheses not work, that her old ones will have to be reattached, which in some people can lead to a period of decreased function or a setback in physical therapy.  
  
To Dyr, who is still in the early days of living with her new body, and who has recently been no stranger to pain, these seem like small risks.  
  
There is a polite tap on the door.  
  
It’s Harkk. He’s brought them a large thermos of homemade soup for lunch. He is faultlessly polite, though he’s having a little trouble meeting Dyr’s eyes. Not that Dyr can blame him, as she’s having trouble with that too.  
  
They finally both manage when he hands her a cup of soup. He hesitates before pulling his hand back; when he does, he subtly squares his shoulders.  
  
“I’m sorry it took me so long to check in on you,” he says to her. “It was the least I could have done, but I--well. Truthfully, I was ashamed, and it made me too cowardly to face you.”  
  
Dyr’s left hand comes up in front of her to stay the apology. Before, both would have come up, but she’s not so used to living in the new one yet that it participates in such natural gestures.  
  
“It was an honest mistake,” Dyr says. The words have been in her head for the past day, since she finished her meeting in the eatery with Bafurr, and they come smoothly. Even so, she can feel a lump forming in her throat. “And you and your husband and Skjaldi have bent over backward trying to make it right by me. Whatever of your actions may have warranted an apology, they’ve been forgiven. I forgive you. I’m ok.” She catches her breath, because this last thing is true, and it’s a momentous thing to realize.  
  
Harkk nods at her words, eyes shining. He’s clearly a bit too choked up to speak, so Dyr tries awkwardly to fill the pause.  
  
“And, uh, it looks like I’m getting a free state-of-the-art prosthetics upgrade out of this, so that’s pretty cool.”  
  
From her end of the pile of blueprints, Skjaldi perks up. “Free? Because it sounds like you--”  
  
Dyr, sensing what’s coming, has already started laughing. “Oh, Skjaldi, no--”  
  
“-- _paid and arm and a leg for it!_ ”  
  
Skjaldi erupts into a full on cackle at her own joke, and that’s the end of Dyr’s composure. Bafurr just stares at Skjaldi. Skjaldi makes finger guns at him. Bafurr puts his face in his hands and heaves a long, long sigh. Even Harkk is chuckling, tension visibly bleeding out of him.  
  
“Oh my gods,” says Skjaldi, when she gets herself under control. “I have been _waiting_ for the right time to deploy that joke.”  
  
***  
  
“Have you decided on whether you want to be awake for this?”  
  
“Yes. I mean, yes I do want to be awake. I’m pretty curious about what you’ll be doing to me.” This isn’t a lie, but the real reason feels too vulnerable to say: she was horrified by waking up different, last time. She knows staying conscious is only an illusion of control over the procedure, but she wants it anyway.  
  
“Alright,” says Bafurr. “Then sign this, refusal of anesthesia--if the sensory input becomes too much, I can sedate you.”  
  
“Thank you.” Dyr struggles a little with her initials. No matter how good this new arm is going to be, she thinks, she will probably have to learn to write left-handed.  
  
She hands off the tablet, and Bafurr checks the screen, his power cord, the variety of other cables and tools he’s brought. Satisfied, he turns back to Dyr. “Ready?”  
  
Dyr looks at Skjaldi, perched on a counter across the room, who gives her an encouraging smile. Skjaldi has been nearly constantly in Dyr’s company, the past few days; she finally told her parents she wanted to leave the station with Dyr. As she predicted, they did not take it well.  
  
It’s a reminder to Dyr that she’s not the only one stepping into the unknown; and truly, that puts her in very good company. She tries to settle back into the bed. “Let’s do this thing.”  
  
Bafurr works steadily, focused, unbothered by Skjaldi and Dyr chatting with each other. The start is a lot of software work, tablet connected to a USB port near the crook of her elbow, and another in the bend of her knee. When he removes the chassis of the limbs, carefully exposing miniscule data chips, fiber optic cables, and minute machinery made to simulate the functions of muscles and veins, Dyr feels a sickening kind of thrill. That’s where her blood and bone are meant to be. That’s where they _aren’t_. She keeps her eyes firmly on Skjaldi or on the ceiling for the ensuing stretches of time, catching peripheral glimpses of Bafurr taking up tiny semiconductors and delicate bundles of cable from the supplies he brought, placing them down in her limbs where he is presumably threading them into the machinery already there.  
  
When Bafurr takes up the tablet again, Dyr feels it.  
  
At first, she jolts up, peering at her lap in dismay--it felt like she’d peed herself, or started bleeding. There was a slow, burning warmth running down the inside of her thigh from where the leg attached to her stump, but no stain, no electrical fire--and then she realizes, she’s feeling it in the leg itself. In the metal and polymer.  
  
Bafurr’s concern transmutes to excitement when she communicates that it’s not pain she’s feeling. He dives back into the work, and she lays back, steadying herself. There’s a swooping feeling in her chest and gut, warm and ephemeral; it’s more than just excitement, she’s pretty sure. The sensation grows, and her suspicions are confirmed; it’s the familiar, sorely missed, one-of-a-kind feeling that comes with clerical power.  
  
Euphoria lights up the space behind her eyes, the base of her skull. Bafurr is reconnecting circuits, reigniting coded processes, and she feels her mind come back online in a connection that she hadn’t realized she missed; power and light and the grace of Pelor pouring up her limbs and into her heart like the fusion-fueled plasma of a sun’s core. It’s orgasmic, and beautiful, so beautiful. She wants to cry but can’t; she feels as though light must be shining out her eyes and mouth, like her heart and every vital organ must be going nova--  
  
There is a hiss, a slight pressure at her neck, and she sinks into unconsciousness.  
  
***  
  
“I’m sorry I had to sedate you. You weren’t responding to me when I asked if you were in pain, and your heart rate was becoming dangerously high.”  
  
“‘S okay,” says Dyr. She feels groggy. She makes a tentative effort, and finds she can still move her arms and legs. The mechanical ones feel weird, though, like nerves buzzing--a feeling somewhere between her leg being asleep and having the jitters so hard she feels compelled to jounce it up and down. She lifts her head to look at them, then scrambles to sit up. Skjaldi, sensibly, finds the button to elevate the head of the bed, and Dyr settles her new arm into her lap.  
  
The arm has grown thicker, like Bafurr has added another layer or like he replaced the outer layer to fit more inside, she’s not sure. The chassis is completely stunning. It’s covered in whorls and runes of the dwarven alphabet and organic, mathematically perfect designs, all shining, like oil-slick or a faint rainbow. She follows the lines up her forearm, over her bicep, up under the sleeve of her hospital gown; she pulls it back to see her shoulder. The lines coalesce there into a picture: a wise old man’s face surrounded by the rays of a stylized sun. Pelor.  
  
Bafurr interrupts her reverie gently. “If you feel up for a wheelchair ride, I want to show you something.”  
  
Dyr, completely distracted and trying to keep her emotions from spilling out of her wholesale, initially refuses the wheelchair on a reflex, and swings herself onto her feet, only to be caught by a smirking Skjaldi when she nearly falls. She accepts the chair.  
  
They wheel her nearly to the other side of the station. It takes a while to get to the observation deck Bafurr has in mind. Dyr wonders what about this place she needs to see; so far, it’s identical to the four other observation decks they passed to get here.  
  
Bafurr checks his watch, “T minus two minutes. Well,” he grins at Dyr, and there’s something mischievous in it, a joke he hasn’t shared yet. “Do you have any questions you’d like to ask about your new prostheses?”  
  
Dyr is thoroughly perplexed, but has the feeling that she’s being set up to come to a particular conclusion, if she just asks enough questions. She decides to roll with it.  
  
“They feel weird, like they’re asleep or something. Like those are flesh and blood limbs. Does that feeling ever go away?”  
  
“Unfortunately, I can’t say for certain. Sensation so close to that of biological tissue is largely uncharted territory in the cybernetic field.”  
  
Okay, so she might just have peripheral neuropathy--or the cyborg equivalent--for the rest of her life. Not great. Might as well hear all the cons at once. “They’re pretty heavy, heavier than the last version--I mean, that makes sense, I saw you put a lot of new stuff in. I...don’t want to seem ungrateful, the chassis is incredible, but would there be a way to reduce…?”  
  
“Actually, that should be alleviated somewhat, if all goes according to plan.” Bafurr checks his watch again. “In just over a minute.”  
  
“Very mysterious,” Dyr says. There’s a lot of smugness lurking in the brush of Bafurr’s beard, though, and she finds the smile contagious. “Am I safe to be exposed to water?”  
  
“Yes, these are like standard prostheses in that regard--immersion for prolonged periods of time, say several standard hours, is inadvisable, but precipitation and short dunks should be fine.”  
  
Not bad. She’s never liked swimming. She’s probably too heavy for it now anyway.  
  
Bafurr glances at his wrist again, then motions for Skjaldi to take up the handles of the wheelchair. She wheels Dyr up to one of the wide windows, and then takes up a position on her right. Bafurr appears on her left.  
  
The station, orbiting around the second moon of Deneb IV, glides out of the moon’s penumbra and into the light of the star. It’s a sudden, bluish sunrise, brilliant as diamonds. Even with the outer sensors darkening the forcefield to protect against the worst of the UV radiation, it’s bright.  
  
It creeps in starting at her fingertips; an echo of the waves of warmth and power she felt in the surgical room. Before she can really register fully what she is feeling, it surges up her arm and leg. The tingling in the limbs subsides; she feels instead bright, and warm, like a blush bounded by the places where the metal is attached to flesh. It’s almost an adrenaline rush--but maybe that’s just her excitement, because the limbs _do feel lighter_ , as though some kind of minor gravity suspenders have kicked into gear within the confines of her own body.  
  
She stands. She’s shaky, but she stays up.  
  
Bafurr checks her over, especially at the places her mechanical parts meet biological ones. He asks if she feels too hot, or any burning, or overwhelmed, or euphoric. He holds a hand over the surface of her metal arm, and curious, she does it too. There is a nearly imperceptible amount of heat radiating from the patterns inscribed there.  
“They’re solar powered,” she says to him, not really a question.  
  
“Able to absorb a variety of wavelengths, so you won’t be restricted to one star. It’s a gimmick, more than anything,” he says, but she can see he’s swelling with pride. “The true function of the limbs is to restore your ability to cast. You could try a cantrip and see, if you think that’s not too soon for you--” He’s nearly as excited as she is. Skjaldi looks both a little worried, has been hovering to make sure Dyr doesn’t topple over again, but mostly just as thrilled as Dyr herself feels.  
  
Dyr thinks about it. She could try to make a little light; it’s a relatively simple trick, for a cleric, persuading some molecules to give up a few photons worth of stored energy. She focuses on the tip of her index finger, the metal one, and centers herself like she was taught to do in her very first lessons. She thinks about drawing energy through her feet, from the sun soaked earth of her homeworld, from the hull beneath her humming with engines built before her grandparents’ birth and still going strong. She lets the energy into her, pushes it out again, like the relief of breathing after having her head held under, like falling into the arms of her family again, and the tip of her finger lights up like a firefly. Just as brief, but for a second, bright and present.  
  
The three of them are almost reverent in the silence that follows. It’s like they don’t even dare cheer, for fear of breaking the spell that has been cast over this moment. Dyr badly wants to try again. She wants to prove to herself she can sustain the magic, but she can’t bring herself to. She knows she will fail before she can succeed, knows it will take time just like walking and holding things did, and she doesn’t want to dive right into the work, not yet. This moment, this glimpse of everything she lost returned to her, feels miraculous. She stands colt-legged and coursing with divine magic, sun-soaked and basking in her own reborn skill and re-created body, and sends her prayer of thanks out to the stars.  
  
***  
  
Durizatrude Station has only four-hundred sixty-eight souls inside its hull. Word inevitably gets around.  
  
Dyr and Bafurr are working through a couple more kinks--he thinks that adding a bit more insulation to the circuitry will reduce the buzzing Dyr’s been feeling--when the Foreman shows up.  
  
Dyr never learns the Foreman’s name. He doesn’t bother to introduce himself, but goes straight to Bafurr and clasps his hand with both of his in profuse congratulation. Bafurr fumbles for a moment to put down the tool he was applying to Dyr’s thigh, but returns the two-handed clasp.  
  
“It’s a work of art; a cultural treasure,” the Foreman says. He says it in dwarvish. Bafurr smiles hesitantly.  
  
“Um, thanks,” Dyr says, nettled for reasons she can’t name, “It can also understand dwarvish, even if it can’t speak it.”  
  
The Foreman turns to her for the first time, clearly baffled. Then he shakes his head, abruptly annoyed. “No, not you, girl, you’re perfectly common,” he snaps. “The piece of our tech you’re wearing.” He turns back to Bafurr, as though she’d never interrupted their conversation. “It will be inducted into the gallery of our greatest works, I know it. I will nominate it myself.”  
  
Dyr isn’t sure she could have contained her response if she wanted to, but she doesn’t want to, and decides not to. “You,” she says to the Foreman, “are hands down the rudest individual I’ve ever met.” The choice of the word _rude_ is deliberate; although among human speakers of Standard _rude_ and _impolite_ are mostly interchangeable, _rude_ stands out to dwarves thanks to its other meanings: roughly-made, lacking sophistication. It’s more like saying _rude and stupid in a way I can’t help but condescend to_.  
  
_That_ gets the Foreman’s attention, of course. He makes an effort to stare down his nose at Dyr, an especially gallant one given that Dyr stands nearly two meters tall, while the Foreman is well under one and a half. Bafurr, definitely more sensible than Dyr and possibly taking pity on the Foreman’s awkward attempt at aloofness, tries to de-escalate the situation.  
  
“Foreman, I modified Dyr’s prosthetic limbs as a gift to her, and because I felt the honor of my family demanded no less. I am grateful for your nomination--truly, I can’t begin to express how much--but for Dyr’s sake, I would like to keep this model in Prototype status and submit a more improved version for review to the gallery.”  
  
The Foreman has transferred his scowl, undiminished, to Bafurr, who is beginning to realize his miscalculation, and scrambles to salvage his explanation. “I also think having her movements unrestricted by cultural patent could provide me with field data I wouldn’t be able to--”  
  
“No, wait, let me try to understand,” the Foreman interrupts, with a chuckle that sounds forced. “This girl signed a waiver to upon offering her clerical services to our resource recovery mission, assuming all the standard procedures were followed, and now she’s demanding reparations from you? For a freak accident?”  
  
“I didn’t _demand_ anything--”  
  
“I _offered_ her--”  
  
“I’m invoking the Fifth Gordrotir Clause,” the Foreman interrupts, _again_. “Because you’re right, Bafurr, there is so much data to be gathered here, and it is _ours to gather_. This is too valuable a thing to let a callow human girl blow it up again the next time she wanders into some unforeseen situation. This technology should be safeguarded.”  
  
Dyr tries to wrap her head around this. “Wait, are you--are you saying I can’t leave?” This can’t be legal.  
  
“Oh, you’re _very_ welcome to leave,” says the Foreman nastily. “But those prostheses will have to remain.”  
  
Dyr should take a deep breath. She should count to ten, and calm the fuck down. She’s seeing _red_. “That’s _part of my body_ you are trying to seize, you pompous jackass.”  
  
The Foreman, on the other hand, has thoroughly reclaimed his dignity. “I will be filing the paperwork the moment the office opens tomorrow,” he says smugly, before turning to Bafurr, brow furrowed. “I’m sorry to have to do this, Artificer. I don’t want this to be difficult any more than you do. I hope you will reconsider.” And with that, he strides smartly out the door.  
  
Dyr, ready to bubble over a little more, snarls, “There is no way he can do that.”  
  
Bafurr, stiff backed, glances at her. “Given that clause he invoked, I’m afraid he can.” He continues as her jaw drops open, cutting off another futile outburst. “It’s a legal throwback to the era of unrestrained capitalism in the Dwarven Apparatus. Basically, the law states that should the social need be great enough, the society can seize a patent from an individual creator--it was meant for the days when people died from being unable to afford overpriced medicine.”  
  
“But this isn’t...it’s not life or death. If this were brought to court, it couldn’t hold up, could it?”  
  
“Hard to say. You keeping the limbs isn’t life or death either, it could be argued, by a good enough lawyer. In any case, it would be enough to keep you entangled in our legal system for some time.”  
  
He looks afraid, and it’s making Dyr afraid. The rage adrenaline is bleeding out of her now, too, which isn’t helping. “What can we do?” she asks him.  
  
He takes a sharp breath, collecting himself. “The Office of Patents opens at oh-nine-hundred, which is in ten standard hours,” he says, “and I don’t think he was bluffing about that. Get Skjaldi.”  
  
***  
  
“We need to steal a shuttle,” says Skjaldi.  
  
“I really don’t want to steal anything,” says Dyr. “How quick do you think we could buy a shuttle? I’d be happy to pay for it, I’ve been saving. Do you know anyone who is selling a shuttle?”  
  
“No clue,” says Skjaldi, a determined light coming into her eyes. “But I’m gonna find out.”  
  
Skjaldi sends a few messages, then they return to her favorite cargo bay eatery. Skjaldi downs a full tankard of ale in a startlingly short time, orders kugel, and then starts gossiping quickly with as many techs, pilots, and resource-scrappers in her vicinity as she can. Dyr gets pretty lost for this part of the proceedings, because her understanding of dwarvish is limited when everyone gets talking this fast and all over each other. But by the time Skjaldi is halfway through the meal, she seems to have the information she wants. She grabs her plate of kugel in one hand and Dyr’s left hand in the other and pulls her off after a young redbearded girl who leads them through the cargo bay, past several churning shuttle-recharge stations, down a ramp and into what appears to be a hole caustically melted into the wall. There’s a narrow space, built between the melted wall and the one next to it, which appears to be full of a variety of food packages, clothes, electronics--Dyr spots a couple orcish foodstuffs, nothing frightening, but generally too niche and of dubious sanitation code status to be sold in big station markets. Not-quite-smuggler stuff. Skjaldi is talking with a skinny, redbearded young man--presumably related to the girl--politely inquiring about used shuttles, it’s alright if he hasn’t installed a new spatial positioning system, they’ll make do--and of course, if she’s asking the SPS left off, they’ll be untrackable. The redbearded girl is fiddling with a handheld console game, studiously ignoring the transaction. Dyr decides to take her example, and sidles up to her. “Cool game. Can I see?”  
  
The girl considers. “If I can see your arm.”  
  
Dyr grins. “Sure.”  
  
When Skjaldi’s done, she has a key and some papers in hand, and they stop by to check the shuttle in the bay. It’s a real junker, but it will fly.  
  
“What now?” asks Dyr, looking at a patch that’s been riveted over a hull breach. She’s trusted more experimental dwarven craftsmanship, she reminds herself.  
  
Skjaldi heaves a sigh, and turns back to the causeways for the residential decks. “Now...I gotta go home and pack. And say goodbye to everyone.”  
  
Oh. Yeah, that thing where Dyr’s problems are forcing Skjaldi to flee her only home in the middle of the night. “Do you want moral support?” Dyr asks. “Or would you like to be alone?” It’s awkward and too direct, but mincing around the situation at this point would just be insulting to Skjaldi.  
  
Skjaldi thinks about this for a second. “My parents would want to meet you,” she says.  
  
***  
  
“So you’re Dyr,” said Skjaldi’s mother, Derala, from over crossed arms. She’s forcing her tone to be soft, like she wants to give Dyr the benefit of the doubt, and see her as something more than the woman who is spiriting her child away. She glances at Dyr’s right arm. “Master Bafurr did well with you.”  
  
“He was incredibly generous,” says Dyr. “Everyone at Durizatrude has been.” Minus the Foreman, but now is neither the time or place to draw attention to that.  
  
The compliment was apparently a miscalculation. “So you’ll be taking my daughter, too, then.”  
  
Dyr falters, but Skjaldi saves her. “Mom!” she shouts from the next room, where she is sorting possessions into a large duffel with her father. “I TOLD Dyr I wanted to leave. Like I have for YEARS. She just offered me a ride.”  
  
Derala doesn’t even glance toward Skjaldi’s voice; she maintains steady, cold eye contact with Dyr, who is wishing with increasing fervor that the floor would swallow her. “So you’ll take her as far as Alenhroft Spaceport?”  
  
“I’ll take her as far as she wants to go with me,” Dyr says, keeping her voice even.  
  
Derala hums a little assent. Then asks, “So, how many weeks have you known each other, again?” There’s a little emphasis on the way she says _weeks,_ like the fact that she’s having to use it in this sentence at all is absurd.  
  
“People don’t have to know each other for decades to be friends, Mom!” Skjaldi yells from the other room again. “Gods, could you please come in here? I need your help with something.”  
  
Derala leaves, and the door shuts behind her. Dyr can hear Skjaldi’s and Derala’s voices cutting back and forth, raised just below shouting. After a moment, the door opens again and Skjaldi’s father--Noril, Dyr remembers--wanders in, holding a worn stuffed animal. It looks, beneath the greyed color and lots of restitching, to be some kind of wingless bird.  
  
Noril sees her looking at it, and gives her a strained smile. “From when Skjaldi was little,” he explains. “She doesn’t want to take it with her. She loved this thing.” He looks down at it, voice breaking a little. “I can’t believe she just wants to leave it behind.”  
  
Yep, Dyr thinks, this is the worst.  
  
At last, duffel slung across her back, Skjaldi emerges to say her goodbyes. Derala doesn’t let their argument stand in the way of gathering her daughter close, and telling her she loves her. Skjaldi gives Noril a gentle kiss on the cheek, but doesn’t take the stuffed toy.  
  
“I’m really sorry it had to go down like this,” Dyr says to Skjaldi, once they are out of earshot. “I don’t know if there’s any way I can make it up to you...”  
  
“It would have been nice to have their blessing in the end,” says Skjaldi, marching steadily down the corridor. “It would have been neat, like in a story. But it wasn’t the most important thing. I know life isn’t always fairy tale endings.”

_Except for mine,_ thinks Dyr, guiltily. She’s walking away from this with her calling restored to her, and with a new friend at her side.  
  
“Hey,” says Skjaldi, drawing her out of her reverie. “I don’t need a fairy tale ending. The most important thing is that I get to have any kind of story at all.” She looks calm. Dyr isn’t sure how much of that is a brave face; she can think of few things more important to her than the regard of her own family. It’s hard to swallow, but Dyr will have to accept it.  
  
Harkk and Bafurr meet them at the shuttle dock, and _that’s_ when Skjaldi’s eyes become wet. They both hug her, long and heartfelt. They both hug Dyr, too, and tell the two of them to be careful.  
  
“Those battle scars are respectable,” says Harkk, pointing to his jaw to mirror where the shiny, scarred skin creeps out of Dyr’s collar. “But pace yourself getting more, please.”  
  
“And here’s a key to a VPN you can use to contact me,” says Bafurr, handing Dyr a tiny drive. “If you need any advice about maintenance.”  
  
“Thank you,” says Dyr, “I really don’t know how to thank you enough. You’ve done so much for us.”  
  
“Well,” Bafurr says, “I really would like some field data on my prototype, if you can manage that.”  
  
Dyr smiles. “Yes, sir.”  
  
Their bags are finally stowed, the supplies for the trip double checked, and Skjaldi is in the pilot seat entering in the flight plan. “How long til we reach Alenhroft?” Dyr asks her.  
  
“Should be about five standard days,” says Skjaldi. She takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. In front of her the screen reads “Initiate preprogrammed flight plan? [Y] /[N].”  
  
“Check me out,” says Skjaldi, and Dyr can hear her try to infuse her voice with a bit of bravado. “About to fly myself out of the only place I’ve ever lived with my own two hands.”  
  
Dyr glances down at the hands in her lap; the light brown skin, and its metallic mirror. She smiles to herself. Close enough.  
  
She reaches out and twines her fingers with Skjaldi’s, who gives her hand a little squeeze. Skjaldi hits the [Y] button. The shuttle whirs to life, slips silently out of the dock, and lifts into the dark, star-dotted sky.

**Author's Note:**

> The human bard Bafurr quotes is Dessa. Trololololol. 
> 
> Apologies for any inconsistencies between usage of "dwarven" and "dwarvish." I had no idea what I was doing there.


End file.
